An ongoing discussion at Column Five HQ is ”What if social media manifested itself in real life?” It’s a question that addresses much of our personal and professional lives and can be characterized as constant noise, new trends, and the occasionally absurd, among other things. And while most of our commentary tends to evolve into abstract tangents, we decided to focus on one application of the hypothesis. We settled on the idea of “What if you lived in an apartment building with social media?”, but that proved to be a mouthful. So we simplified this title to “What if social media sites were your neighbors?” Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.
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Now that everyone loves them, early adopters and forward thinkers want to know what is next for the infographic. Is this just the beginning of a visual revolution, or have they already jumped the shark? This is an important question, especially for those who are making large investments in the medium, such as publishers and marketers.
Is the Infographic Dead?
My cofounder, Jason Lankow, says it well when people ask about the fate of infographics in the face of increasing web saturation. As he describes it, we are seeing the death of the novelty of infographics, not a decline in their value. Just as the popularity of a new musical genre does not affect its legitimacy (right, hipsters?), the prevalence of infographics does not limit the opportunity to use the medium to create something of incredible quality and utility. The data boom and growing need to display complex concepts simply ensure that these opportunities for graphic visualizations will be plentiful in years to come.
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